Good Intentions
by Chiiyo86
Summary: Sometimes, strangers' good intentions can be a pain. Literally.


A/N: _A little ficlet I wrote for a friend's birthday months ago and forgot to post here. Enjoy!_

Disclaimer: _I don't own anything Supernatural related.  
_

ooo

"Sam, let's just get the fuck out of here."

Sam ignores him, because he's an asshole. He's sitting at the end of Dean's bed and he's cradling his injured arm, fingers playing idly with the bandage.

"Sam…"

Sam exhales noisily.

"Would you quit whining?" he says, his voice tight with exasperation.

"I'm not whining!" Dean protests – which earns him a glare.

Sam looks as tired as Dean feels, with dark bags under his eyes and lines of worry on his forehead. There's a smear of mud on his cheek, and Dean kind of wants to wet his thumb, reach out and wipe it away, like Sam is still five. Instead, he kicks his brother's thigh with his foot and says, "You have mud on your face, dumbass."

Sam glowers, but still raises a hand to his face, lets it hover somewhere near the right side of it, questioning.

"Cheekbone, left," Dean says. "Your left."

Sam licks his palm, rubs the mud with it until all remains is an angry red mark. Dean shifts on the bed. He feels a distant tingle of pain in his thigh, piercing through the haze of painkillers. He has the masochistic impulse to push a finger into the wound, just so he can feel the clarity of physical pain, really feel something that isn't exhaustion and medication-induced numbness. He sits on his right hand to keep himself from doing it. Sam gives him an odd look.

"You have ants in your pants, or what?" he says. "Can't you wait five minutes for the nurse to come so we can be done with these fucking shots?"

"We shouldn't even be here. We could have dealt with those bites ourselves, patched each other up."

"They wouldn't have let us."

Yeah, right. Fuck _them._ Dean sometimes complains that they're rarely thanked by the people they save, but sometimes, just as rarely, gratitude can be fucking overbearing. Joe and Jane, or whatever the hell the young couple's names are, were adamant that Sam and Dean should be checked up in a hospital, and wouldn't take "don't worry about us" for an answer. So here they are, waiting to be given rabies shots because the doctors were kind of freaked out by the couple's description of the "growling beast" that attacked them.

Dean groans.

"That's just ridiculous. Like that thing had rabies."

"Why not?" Sam asks.

Dean lifts an eyebrow.

"Well… come on, Sam. Animals have rabies. This wasn't an animal, this was a… thing."

This makes Sam frown, the word's lack of accuracy messing with his little geeky mind. But he doesn't have anything better to offer, because the thing was something they couldn't identify – not a Wendigo, not a Black Dog, not a werewolf. Just a thing.

"And a thing can't have rabies?" Sam finally says.

Come to think of it, the thing did seem to foam at the mouth a little. Supernatural rabies, now that would be interesting.

"Not normal rabies," Dean says. "So their vaccines won't do shit, and we'll still have wasted our time."

"Maybe it was just an animal. An… incredibly massive, ugly and enraged animal. That had rabies."

It seems like Sam is in an argumentative mood today. Dean wants to retort, but he feels the fight suddenly leave him. He's too fucking wiped out for this shit.

"Whatever," he says, shrugging.

A nurse comes in. She's about forty and probably at the end of her shift, because her face is washed out with weariness and locks of hair hang untidily in her eyes. She makes a valiant attempt at smiling.

"Ready for your shot?" she says, and doesn't wait the answer to her stupid question before she goes to Sam.

Dean watches the needle pierce through the skin of Sam's arm, and contains a shiver of unease. He's not afraid of needles, per se. He's known his fair share of them, they're a necessary evil of hospitals. He just doesn't like them. It's not the pain – he knows pain, knows it intimately, but there's a difference between getting hurt and watching a thin needle penetrate slowly, intentionally, _insidiously_ into his skin. The nurse takes the needle out of Sam's arm and Dean braces himself for his turn, except that she's preparing another syringe and not leaving Sam's side.

"What's that?" Dean asks, puzzled.

"It's Rabies Immunoglobulin," she says. "It's used to prevent infection caused by the rabies virus."

"Oh."

Great, another shot. Sam didn't make a sound through the first one, but this time he hisses softly, and the corners of his mouth curves down.

"Hurts?" the nurse asks, sympathetic.

"It's okay," Sam says, and offers her a dimpled smile. She smiles back, and the lines ease on her face.

When it's Dean's turn, the shot goes into his thigh – the closer to his wound, she explains. He wants to look elsewhere – not to close his eyes, 'cause that would make him look afraid – and think about something distracting, like the strip-tease that girl in Boulder did for him before they had sex_._ She had a mole near her right nipple – _hot._ But for some reason he can't help but look, fascinated, as the needle enters his thigh. The nurse's head is bent over his leg; he can only see a line of gray through her lashes. She isn't wearing any make-up. The needle doesn't hurt, he's too hopped up on painkillers for that, but it's really goddamn uncomfortable, the feeling of something hard and unyielding going through his flesh.

"Hey, Dean," Sam calls.

"Mmh?"

"Remember that time Dad broke his ankle while changing a light bulb?"

Dean snorts a laugh.

"Yeah. The leg of his chair broke and he tried to cling to the lamp but… _Bam. _He was soooo pissed off." Dean smiles at the memory, though nobody laughed at the time – some things take years to be funny. "What made you think of that?"

"I don't know, the hospital, maybe. I had this flashback of Dad hurling insults and objects at the staff."

"I remember. That was something else. They practically kicked him out of the hospital when he asked to leave AMA."

"Okay, done," the nurse says.

Dean blinks.

"What about the second shot?"

"I've done them both. Guess you were to busy getting lost down memory lane."

Dean catches Sam smirking, the manipulative little fucker. Oh, well. At least it's over, now.

"What's your name?" he asks the nurse amiably, because he's in a better mood now.

"Janine."

"What a pretty name."

She chuckles, shakes her head.

"Thanks. And see you in two days."

"What?" Dean's a little satisfied to hear Sam echo him.

"Didn't the doctor tell you?" Janine looks surprised. "It's not over yet. You have three more shots to do."

Dean rubs his face wearily. Isn't that just fantastic? This day keeps getting better and better. Next time, they should knock the civilians over the head after they save them, and run away before they're smothered with good intentions.

Sam grabs Dean's foot and tugs at it to get his attention.

"Want a lollipop for being such a brave boy?" he says, and bites his lip trying not to laugh at his own joke.

"Oh, fuck you, Sam. Can we go now?"

Sam rolls his eyes.


End file.
